Pieces of Happiness
by Cassandra Cassidy
Summary: Shaken by her first case, Mia must get back to life as usual. In the meantime, though, Diego remains a constant reminder that she should always keep a smile on her face. Diego/Mia, oneshot.


_Author's Notes__: This is my first ever Ace Attorney fanfic. Wrote it as a birthday present for HinoMiko16 because she wanted some Diego/Mia.  
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_This fic contains spoilers for the first three games._

_Disclaimer__: I don't own the Phoenix Wright/Ace Attorney franchise.  
_

* * *

**Pieces of Happiness**

* * *

Mia Fey steeled herself as she stood in front of the entrance to Grossberg Law Offices. It had been one full week since her horrific first trial, and she hadn't put in an appearance at the office in that time. Grossberg had immediately granted her the time off when she'd called the night of the trial to request it.

She took several deep breaths, focusing on the frosted glass of the main door. It was almost as though she were practicing her meditation exercises back in Kurain Village. Then she opened the door, stepped inside, and shut it again behind her with a quiet finality. With a nod to the receptionist, she started down the hallway and passed her three associates' offices before entering her own.

Her desk was a mess of paperwork. She knew most of it would be related to Terry Fawles' case and, in fact, she was counting on it. As she sat down and methodically began to sort through the documents, she began to feel a sense of closure. She was going to bounce back from this. She _was_.

A knock sounded, startling her.

"Come in…"

The door opened to reveal Diego Armando, whom she hadn't seen since the trial.

"You planning to skip lunch today, Kitten?" he asked, leaning casually against the doorframe.

Mia blinked at him, then looked at the clock on her desk. She stared. Somehow, without her noticing, it had gotten to be noon.

"I had no idea it was already so late," she said, shaking her head dazedly.

Diego remained silent, raising his ever-present coffee cup to his lips as Mia collected herself. She locked her filing cabinet and snatched up her purse, getting to her feet.

"Has Mr. Grossberg already gone downstairs to the cafeteria, then?" she asked him.

"Ha…! Do you even have to ask? He was on his way there at least five minutes ago, no doubt."

Mia started for the door, but her senior attorney made no move to get out of her way, forcing her to pause. He gave her a once over.

"I hope that case hasn't shaken your resolve too much, Kitten. I would hate to see all that potential go to waste."

"What potential would that be?" Mia asked. "I lost the trial."

"On paper, maybe," Diego allowed. "But everyone in that courtroom knew who the real culprit was."

"It's not over yet," Mia said darkly.

"That's what I like to hear."

Diego pushed himself away from her doorframe and headed off down the hall, and Mia quickly followed suit.

Grossberg Law Offices was situated on the ground floor of a larger building, with a cafeteria in the basement level below that was available for use by the employees in all of the offices. Mia and Diego made their way downstairs, separated to order what food they wanted, and rejoined each other in the short line at the cash register.

"So where were you all last week?" Diego asked her. "That's a pretty long time to sit at home moping over things that can't be helped."

Balancing her tray on one hand, Mia flicked her bangs out of her eyes with the other.

"I wasn't moping," she said defensively. "I was spending some quality time with my little sister."

That was sort of true; she _had_ met up with Maya during the latter half of her week off. The fact that Dahlia had killed her own – albeit foster – sister had made Mia miss her own sister more even than usual, and she had needed to see that she was alive and well. It was all part of the healing process.

However, there was something else she'd been struggling with just after the trial that she wasn't sure she could discuss with her colleague. She had desperately wanted to know why Terry Fawles had been willing to cover for – and _die_ for – a demon like Dahlia Hawthorne. And now that he was dead, she had wondered if, perhaps, he regretted it and would be willing to give her the evidence she needed to take Dahlia back to court and get a conviction this time. But she had also been afraid. She had been unsure, and that had made it impossible for her to channel his spirit using the Kurain technique, which required a great deal of strength and concentration, neither of which she'd possessed so shortly after the trial.

By the end of the week, she'd given up on that avenue. She would get Dahlia one way or another, with or without help from beyond the grave.

Mia was so wrapped up in her thoughts that she didn't notice that the line was advancing ahead of her until Diego started speaking again.

"Relax, Kitten; you're so tense you might shatter like a dropped coffee cup. And that would be all kinds of tragic…"

Mia shook her head at Diego's odd analogy, hurrying forward to pay for her lunch before heading with him over to an open table. Grossberg and Hammond were sitting together near the windows, talking in hushed tones, a file open on the table between them. Mia frowned, taking a seat.

"What case are they working on?" she asked, motioning to the pair in question.

Diego followed her gaze, then shrugged.

"Who knows? Whatever it is, it doesn't concern us," he said nonchalantly, and dug into his food.

Mia picked at her pasta salad, lost in thought again. She wasn't sure where to go from here. She could try to build a case against Dahlia, which was what she really wanted to do, or she could take on a new client and worry about Dahlia later. The thought of that woman being free for even just one day more made Mia's blood boil, though. Her confidence had been thoroughly shaken by Terry Fawles' death, too, which made it difficult for her to consider ever taking on another client again. She'd known defending an escaped convict for her first trial would be difficult, but she never would have imagined it would end the way it did.

And then there was the always outstanding issue of continuing to keep tabs on the man who had ruined her mother's life. Redd White and his activities were always in mind, and it wouldn't do for her to slack off in her research now, as she still didn't have anywhere near enough hard evidence to take him to court.

Mia wondered how there could be so many awful people out there managing to evade the law so easily.

She must have become visibly agitated, she realized, because Diego was watching her with a curious expression on his face. She glanced down at her lunch in embarrassment; Diego Armando had a way of making her feel not quite up to snuff.

Which made it very difficult for her to bring up what else had been on her mind during her week off. She put down her utensils and braced herself.

"Mr. Armando?" she asked, and when she had his attention, she went on. "I… I know it wasn't your case, and you're probably busy with your own clients, but I was hoping that maybe you'd be willing to help me."

She paused to take a breath, having spoken too quickly so she wouldn't lose her nerve. Before she could continue, Diego interrupted her.

"Already way ahead of you, Kitten," he said. "Although I was wondering how long it was going to take you to ask me…"

Mia gawked at him for a moment. She hadn't expected him to agree so easily.

"R-Really?" was all she could think of to ask.

"Did you already forget?" he countered. "I told you before: strike while the iron is hot."

"One of your rules," she finished for him.

"Well, the iron may have cooled a bit by now, but fortunately for us, it's easy enough to heat it back up."

Mia nodded. Diego cocked his head to one side, grinning at her.

"We'll get her, Kitten. I'll even make a new rule out of it, if it makes you feel better."

"Thank you, Mr. Armando," she said, and she meant it sincerely.

Her colleague shook his head.

"If you want me working on this case with you, you're going to have to start calling me Diego," he informed her. "This 'Mr. Armando' stuff is making me feel old. Save it for those two geezers at the other table."

Mia stifled a laugh.

They each finished the remainder of their meals, returned their trays, and began their climb back up to the offices.

"So when do we start work on the plan to take down Dahlia Hawthorne?" Diego asked her as they passed the receptionist again.

"Well, I don't think I'm ready for a brand new case, yet," Mia admitted, "so I'll probably be working on it full time for the time being. As for you, I'd appreciate your help whenever you're not busy with your own work."

"How does 'right now' sound, then?" he asked.

Mia was more than happy to get started.

* * *

They worked ceaselessly for the rest of the week, gathering information. They looked into Dahlia's father and his jewelry trade. They investigated her foster mother, though it told them very little. They slowly began to compile a list of "Melissa Foster's" contacts and systematically interviewed them regarding what they knew about her. They were all too glad to help, as it turned out. The media had had a field day with the trial, and Dahlia's fellow students all seemed to want a piece of the limelight.

Mia learned quickly just how Diego had come to make such a name for himself. He possessed a dogged determination comparable to that upstart Miles Edgeworth. "Giving up" wasn't in his vocabulary.

As the first month of their investigation went on, though, Mia began to realize that it wasn't just the case he was interested in pursuing with all his might. Every evening as the business day drew to a close, he would invite her to coffee, to dinner, to the movies – to just about anywhere. And every day she just barely managed to politely turn him down, because he only became more persistent the more she tried to dissuade him.

This evening was no different.

"Come on, now, Kitten; it's time you graduated from coffee candy and tried out the real thing," Diego was saying, standing in her doorway with his jacket slung over his shoulder.

"If I drink coffee this late in the day, I'll never fall asleep," she replied flippantly.

"Ha…! Sleep is overrated," he informed her with a grin.

"Not if you want me to be able to function on this case."

"All right, fine; we won't go for coffee, then."

Mia nearly slumped into her chair with relief; he'd let her off more quickly than usual. But as it turned out, Diego wasn't finished.

"We'll go to dinner," he said decisively.

"Diego…"

Mia looked up as she filed away the last document on her desk for the day. At his smug look, she gave an exasperated sigh.

"Why are you all of a sudden so bound and determined to hang out with me after work?" she asked. "You see me all day long; I would think you'd want to get away from me for a few hours."

"Is it so hard to believe that I enjoy your presence?" he answered without really answering.

Mia resisted the urge to pull at her hair in frustration, turning instead to lock her filing cabinet and retrieve her coat and her purse. That accomplished, she stood and faced him. He was watching her, as he often did, with a bemused look on his face. As she shrugged on her coat, Mia wondered if she was reading too much into his behavior.

"If I go to dinner with you tonight, do you promise you'll back off for a little while?" she asked finally, her resolve slipping.

Diego's face lit up with triumph.

"Define 'a little while'," he said, then laughed as Mia made a swatting motion at him and squeezed past him out of her office.

* * *

As it turned out, Mia was forced to eat her words along with her food that night. Despite her entreaty, once she caved to his request the first time, she ended up going out with Diego after work on a regular basis. He had an entire repertoire of 'favorite' locales around the city, and he assured her that once they'd exhausted those, he'd be happy to seek out new ones.

Mia told him that was fine with her, as long as he kept it in mind that she was _not_ drinking caffeine on their work nights. Diego agreed to her terms, albeit with some reluctance, and soon they had worked out quite the amicable routine.

At the office, things were progressing smoothly. They had an entire drawer in her filing cabinet, now, dedicated to taking down Dahlia Hawthorne, though to Mia's disappointment, none of her activities were suspicious enough to take her back to trial. Diego was perpetually optimistic about the whole thing, though, which made it impossible for Mia to feel too discouraged. His moods were rather infectious.

"Once a criminal, always a criminal," he assured her again and again. "She's bound to slip up sometime; we just have to keep up the scrutiny. With any luck, the guilt will eat her alive and she'll run to the police with a confession."

Mia doubted that very seriously, but she agreed that they couldn't back off.

That was, she agreed with him until one day, at the end of March, when Dahlia vanished off of her radar, and someone she'd been neglecting came back into her mental spotlight.

* * *

Mia barged into Diego's office without so much as a knock. He was unshakable as ever, barely glancing up at her as he poured a new cup of coffee for himself from the pot on his desk.

"Sit down, Kitten; you look like you might pass out."

Mia took the instruction, falling into the chair across from him.

"She's gone," Mia told him, hardly able to contain her fury. "Disappeared into thin air."

"Impossible. People don't just vanish without a trace."

"She did it once before," Mia protested. "She had everyone convinced she was dead for five years."

She buried her face in her hands.

"I don't understand it! There should be a paper trail of some kind! She must have transferred schools and changed her address, but there should be a record of it. Of course, the police are being no help at all…"

"Of course not. She wasn't the one on trial, and suspicious as she is, they can't keep tabs on her forever without just cause."

"She's a murderer! That's just enough cause!"

Diego sipped his coffee with an unreadable expression on his face, seemingly ignoring her outburst. Then he lowered the mug and looked at her seriously.

"So what are you telling me, Kitten? You're giving up?"

"It's a dead end. Nothing we've uncovered is conclusive."

"Answer the question."

"The only thing we had going for us was that diamond from the fake kidnapping, and no one can find it. It might as well not even exist."

"Are you giving up or not, Mia?"

He looked something akin to betrayed, and she suddenly resented him for his coldness.

"What else _can _I do?" she asked through her teeth. "She's always one step ahead, if not two. She's outsmarted me!"

"Because you let her!" he protested, slamming his mug down on the desk. The contents sloshed around dangerously. "She wins it all if you give up!"

She clenched her hands on the arms of her chair, trying to stop them from shaking. The thought of Dahlia continuing to walk free made her sick to her stomach.

"I don't know where to go from here," she admitted quietly.

"The only way you _can_ go," Diego said. "Forward. I'm not giving up on you, Kitten, so don't you go giving up on me. A lawyer's work isn't done until justice is done. That's one of my rules."

Mia nodded, silent. She wasn't sure where she'd be without Diego's constant reminders to stay focused.

"There's still one problem, though," she said after a few moments. "I can't keep working exclusively on this one case forever. Mr. Grossberg has been asking me when I'm going to be ready to take on my next client and I've been stalling for now, but…"

Diego leaned back in his chair.

"He's been bugging me about the same thing. Keeps going on about how he and Hammond aren't the only two lawyers here and all that."

He waved his hand dismissively.

"So we'll make a new plan," he said. "The wicked witch is lying low for now, right? So we'll lay low, too. Let her think she's safe for a while, and wait for her to come back out in the open."

"And in the meantime…" Mia trailed off.

"In the meantime, we go back to remembering that Dahlia Hawthorne isn't the only criminal running amok."

Mia knew just what criminal needed her attention at the moment.

* * *

"Walden… Wentworth… Here it is! White!"

Mia pulled the file she'd been searching for out of the cabinet with an air of accomplishment. It was short-lived, however, as she noticed how thin the file folder was.

"This can't be all the information Grossberg has on this guy," she muttered in disbelief. "Unless he's deliberately not keeping records of their meetings…"

Redd White. That name had been – quite literally – haunting Mia for years. When her mother had first left Kurain Village when she was a child, Mia had used her spirit channeling to try and determine why. Two names had come up: Marvin Grossberg and Redd White. Grossberg had been easy enough to track down, and she'd been sticking to him like glue ever since. The fact that he was a lawyer was all too convenient; she was able to become one as well, which would help her condemn Redd White once she finally had enough dirt on him to take him to trial.

He was turning out to be much harder to reach than Grossberg, however, and much more guilty, too. She had seen him in person the same day that she had lost track of Dahlia Hawthorne's whereabouts. He and Grossberg had had some sort of meeting, and after White left, Grossberg had been a nervous wreck. She had already determined that White was much more responsible for her mother's disappearance than Grossberg himself was, and with Dahlia untouchable for the time being, Mia had returned her focus to her original mission, the mission that had led her far away from home.

She flipped through the sparse contents of the file folder, frown deepening as she did so. There was little information there that would be of any use to her, she determined. With a resigned sigh, she slid the folder back into place and shut the drawer.

"There you are, Kitten; I've been looking all over for you."

Mia jumped, nearly dropping the notebook she'd brought with her to copy any useful information in. She spun around to face the door.

"Diego… I thought you went home for the night," she said, trying to play her surprise off as just pertaining to his presence.

Diego leaned against the doorframe, coffee cup steaming in hand.

"Left my mug on my desk," he said casually. "Figured while I was here retrieving it, I might as well have a cup. There's nothing worse than missing a coffee break."

"Is that another one of your rules?" Mia asked, lips twitching upward despite the fact that he was quite obviously blocking her from leaving.

"Something like that," he replied.

His eyes flickered to the notebook in her hand.

"Grossberg know you're in here?"

Mia narrowed her eyes.

"Mr. Grossberg is the _reason_ I'm in here."

Diego held up his free hand.

"Claws in, Kitten; I'm not your scratching post."

Not appreciating his wit at the moment, she tried to brush past him and out the door. Diego was in the more advantageous position, though, and he swiftly plucked the notebook from her hand.

"Hey, that's—!"

Ignoring her, he flipped it open to the page she had bookmarked.

"Redd White?" he said, puzzled. "What're you reading about him for?"

"It's _personal_," Mia said defensively, snatching the notebook back from him.

He let her, eyed her skeptically, then took a swig of his coffee. Hoping it was enough of a distraction, Mia tried again to pass him, but his other arm barred her way. She glared at him.

"Some of us aren't on break and would like to go home and make dinner," she said pointedly.

"Let's eat out," he suggested instead.

That gave Mia pause. Come to think of it, she hadn't gone out with him since they'd stopped focusing on the Dahlia Hawthorne investigation full time. Diego had taken on a new case and had been out of the office for most of the week, but the trial had wrapped up the day previous – with his client receiving a full acquittal, naturally – and he'd been back at his desk today doing clean-up with his paperwork. Diego hated paperwork, as she'd come to find out over the few years she'd been working at Grossberg Law Offices, and on paperwork days, he had a tendency to bail as soon as it was closing time.

Which was why she'd been so surprised when he snuck up on her in Grossberg's file closet.

She realized that she must have hesitated for too long in her answer, as Diego seemed to have come to the conclusion that she was cross with him.

"Come on, Kitten. Consider it penance for hindering your investigation."

Mia looked at him for a long moment.

"You're not going to tell Mr. Grossberg?" she asked.

"Ha…! Our resident kitten's not the corporate takeover type," he said, grinning at her. "You've got your reasons."

She deflated with a relieved sigh.

"Thank you."

"…So is that a 'yes'?"

Mia laughed.

"Yes, that's a yes."

* * *

Diego hadn't been kidding about the penance, as it turned out. He made up for his rude behavior in the file closet by taking her to her favorite of the restaurants they'd been to. As it so happened, she had developed an affinity for Mexican food, which was apparently fine by Diego, as he had a fondness for it, too, and seemed delighted that they had something in common.

"If I can't get you to appreciate coffee, I can at least get you to appreciate fine dining," had been his take on the matter.

Now they were chatting amiably between bites of tamale, the workday far forgotten. Diego had offered to share, as he always did, but she had learned from previous visits that his were far too spicy for her tastes, and so she'd ordered a more sweetened variety.

"One of these days, I'm going to have you over my place, and I'll make you tamales myself," he informed her.

Mia paused, her drink halfway to her lips, and raised an eyebrow at him in surprise.

"You cook?" she asked. When he nodded, she smiled faintly. "I didn't know that."

"There are plenty of things you don't know about me," he said, looking at her askance with a mysterious grin on his face.

"Oh really?" she drawled, playing along. "Do tell."

"For example," he began, then took a bite of his dinner, chewed, and swallowed.

The resulting pause left her in amused suspense, and she waved her hand for him to continue.

"You probably don't know that I've been a fan of yours since you first stepped foot in our humble law office."

"Really?" Mia asked, somewhat shocked. "But you never even spoke to me until I'd already been there for a year!"

"What can I say?" Diego leaned toward her conspiratorially. "You were a career-woman on a mission, and I was powerless before you."

Mia gave him a good-natured smack in the arm.

"Now you're just teasing me," she said, feeling herself blush.

"I'm serious!" he protested. "Why do you think I wanted to see your first trial in person? I knew from the very beginning that you had just what it takes to be a great defense attorney."

Mia frowned slightly, feeling a sudden drop in her mood.

"I'm not a great defense attorney, though," she said. "I totally blew it."

"That woman is a whole different breed of kitten," Diego said seriously. "That genius prosecutor didn't know what to make of her, either. Even I managed to miscalculate her."

Mia looked at him in surprise; it was not a common thing at all for Diego to speak lowly of himself. She found it extremely unsettling. Hoping to divert the conversation, she backtracked slightly.

"Homemade tamales, huh?" she asked, and he looked at her questioningly. "I think I'd like to try that."

Diego's demeanor perked up immediately, and as they began to make plans for her to visit his place the following weekend, their depressing little deviation became a thing of the past.

* * *

Mia arrived right on time, as promised, on the Saturday evening they'd picked. It was the first weekend of May, and it had rained the night before, so it was rather cool out. Mia climbed the stairs to Diego's apartment, which was in a fairly ritzy complex, not that she was particularly surprised. Big lawyers had a tendency to make big money, after all.

Diego answered the door on her second round of knocks, and when he opened it she could feel a distinct difference in temperature between his place and the hallway.

"How long have you been cooking?" she asked, fanning herself with the end of her scarf as she stepped inside.

"This is day two," he said lightly. At her startled look he smirked at her and said, "Genius takes time, after all."

Mia rolled her eyes and followed him as he led her to the kitchen. She looked around the large apartment as she walked behind him and realized that she had been expecting something much different.

"See something interesting?" he asked as he rounded the kitchen counter and went back to his preparations.

"I must admit, I'm surprised," Mia said after a beat. "I thought there'd be more coffee pots."

Diego laughed aloud at that.

"There are several," he told her. "You can't just use any old pot to brew it to the proper bitterness; I have a handful of trusted ones, and the coffee itself takes care of the rest."

Mia nodded vaguely, amused by how seriously he always treated the subject of his addiction. Addiction, for that matter, may have been too weak a word for it, she sometimes thought.

Diego lifted a towel off of something, revealing it to be a steamer. He plucked one of the tamales out of it with a pair of tongs and put it aside, then moved about checking on the rest of the food he had prepared. Mia stood in the doorway, trying to stay out of his way. She had to admit, he certainly looked like he knew what he was doing. After a few minutes, he returned his attention to the cooled tamale, unwrapping the husk around it and taking a bite.

"Good news," he told her. "Dinner's ready."

Mia insisted on helping him, so he relented and let her arrange the tamales on a plate while he moved back and forth between the kitchen and the dining area with bowls of refried beans, rice, guacamole, and salsa. Mia trailed him on his last trip and nearly dropped the plate as she saw the dining room table. Diego saw her pause and took the plate from her, putting it on the table before returning to lead her to her chair.

"You certainly went all-out, didn't you?" she murmured, because indeed, the table was done up fancier than most of the ones they'd visited at restaurants.

"Nothing but the finest for the finest attorney at Grossberg Law Offices," he said loftily, sitting down across from her.

"Who exactly are we talking about, now?" she asked coyly, long used to his teasing by this point, but Diego just laughed and poured them both some wine before raising his glass to her. Mia echoed the movement.

"Here's to sharing many more meals with the lovely Mia Fey," Diego said, all traces of humor removed from his voice, and as Mia clinked her glass against his, she found that she could barely speak.

"No objections," she finally managed, and she wouldn't have traded the look on his face in that moment for the world.

* * *

The weeks that followed passed by like a whirlwind. Mia's days were consumed by her investigation of Redd White and all of the people whose lives he had a hand in destroying, but her nights were consumed by Diego. For all his machismo and his notoriously inflated ego, he was also incredibly fun to be around, and she had come to find his habits endearing now that she knew him better. And that included his continued insistence, after that first trip she'd made to his apartment, that he'd finally won his way to her heart through her stomach.

The man always seemed to know exactly what would strike her fancy on any given evening, and he was generous to a fault. He took her to a movie that was officially the first in her life that brought her to tears, then proceeded to buy her the movie poster to commemorate the event. He took her on a tour of a botanical garden one weekend and showed up at the office on Monday with a tiny potted _Cordyline stricta_, simply because she had commented on the interesting name while they were out. Grossberg gave both the plant and the poster funny looks whenever he entered her office these days.

Diego even tried his hand at teaching her how to use a computer, although that didn't go over quite as well as they'd expected, but he'd given it a good effort, and it was well worth the jokes he cracked about it later.

Diego had certainly been correct that one night – there _were _a lot of things she hadn't known about him. She learned that he spoke down to women because his overbearing mother had birthed him between two overbearing sisters. She told him she was sure he'd get along brilliantly with Maya, who could appreciate food a thousand times more than she herself could.

He told her about how he'd become and attorney because everyone in the world should have someone who believed in them in their darkest hour.

"Even people like Dahlia?" Mia had felt compelled to ask, and Diego reminded her that Terry Fawles had been the unlucky one placed in that position.

"Some people only get one," he concluded darkly.

Mia told him, when he finally asked, why she wore the magatama, and when he hadn't immediately declared her a crazy-woman and a fraud, she told him about the life of mysticism she'd left behind to pursue the man who'd driven her mother away.

"It's a wonder you don't hate men, Kitten," he'd remarked.

"Lucky for you," she'd teased in reply.

The beginning of summer was spent, when not at the office, at the beach, or in each other's air-conditioned apartments. Mia jokingly suggested that they take a trip up to the mountains and she'd teach him how to meditate under a freezing waterfall.

"And here I thought Kittens were afraid of water," Diego said, evading her proposal.

"And here I thought Diego Armando wasn't afraid of anything," she shot right back, smiling deviously.

She made him brain-chilling fruit smoothies on the evenings when he came over with stacks of rental videos, and he assured her that he'd be depending on her to warm him back up later.

* * *

As the months wore on, Mia began to see her first trial as less of a curse and more of a blessing. As tragic as it had been, and as deep a scar as it had left, the experience had brought her closer to Diego. And with his help, slowly but surely, she grew more determined than ever to become a better attorney.

August rolled around and Mia was starting to think she was finally ready to take on a new case. She spent several days in meetings with Grossberg, going back over some of the basic courtroom procedures since it had been half a year already, and he assessed her and told her she was fit to go. Now she simply had to wait for a client, and the wait turned out to be longer than she'd expected. Two weeks passed with only Redd White's continued activities to keep her occupied at work. She'd taken to helping Diego with his filing just for a change of pace, and the man was more than happy to let her, since he hated paperwork as much as he loved coffee.

By the 26th, she was finding it hard to stay optimistic.

"How can I prove myself in court if there's nobody to defend?" she lamented, stuffing documents into file folders in Diego's office.

"You've just got to be patient, Kitten," he reassured her for what had to be the hundredth time. "It may be lousy for us lawyers when there aren't any clients coming in, but it also means the crime rate's down. Can't really complain about that."

Mia sighed. They'd had this conversation before and it always made her feel better for a few hours and then she was back to worrying again.

"I've probably lost my edge by now," she said. "And speaking of edges, what if my first trial after all this time is against that brat Edgeworth?"

"You'll beat him," Diego said with a certainty that Mia definitely didn't share.

As the work day drew to a close, Diego shut his office door. Mia glanced at him curiously.

"Something you need to say that Mr. Grossberg can't hear?" she questioned.

"I wasn't going to tell you this yet," he said, returning to his desk and taking a large gulp of his coffee. "But you seem like you could use some cheering up, so I'm going to make an exception."

Mia set down the folder she'd been sorting and gave him her full attention, wondering what on earth he was going to say.

"I've got a meeting at the courthouse tomorrow," he went on. "Set it up earlier this week. And by the end of it, I should have exactly what we need to dethrone our demon-princess Dahlia."

Mia was on her feet the next instant, her hands splayed on his desk.

"What?!" she asked shrilly. "How?!"

Diego looked smug as he took another sip of his coffee.

"I don't want to ruin the whole surprise," he said, and Mia made an irritated about-face, returning to her chair and sinking into it with a huff.

"How long have you been working on this without telling me?" she asked after a few seconds.

"I never stopped working on it," he said, shrugging his shoulders. "I knew that that Redd White guy was your primary concern, especially after you mentioned what he did to your mother."

Mia slumped in her seat.

"You didn't have to go through all that trouble…"

"Sure I did," Diego said, and left it at that. "Now let's go; I have the perfect place in mind for our victory dinner."

"It's a little early for that, don't you think?" she asked, but couldn't help laughing at his enthusiasm.

"I'm telling you, Kitten; by this time tomorrow, we've _got_ her."

* * *

In a way, Mia reflected, he'd been right. It had come eight months later than anticipated, but Dahlia Hawthorne was finally behind bars, and it was all thanks to the meeting Diego had had at the courthouse that day.

Mia only wished that she had insisted on going with him.

She knew that he wouldn't want her life to come to a screeching halt on his account, and so she didn't let it. Her days continued to be consumed by work; she was finally getting new clients, and of course her investigation against Redd White was still ongoing. And her nights were still consumed by Diego, but in a way that was, as he might put it, 'as bitter as dark coffee.'

There were no more evenings spent with him at either of their apartments, no more trips to the beach, and no more nights out to dinner, the movies, or anywhere else. Every night after work, now, she travelled to the hospital to sit at Diego's bedside. His overbearing mother and sisters turned out to be less overbearing than she'd been led to believe, and they had signed the forms necessary to allow Mia in to see him. She made one stop on the way, without fail, at his favorite café by the courthouse, to pick up a pair of mocha lattes. She brought them both with her to his hospital room, and drank one slowly, waiting for him to wake up and drink the one she'd brought for him.

She went over in her mind what he'd say when he woke up. He would take a long sip of his latte and then tease her about drinking caffeine so late in the day when she'd always insisted that it would interfere with her work. Then he would tell her he was proud of her for finally graduating from coffee candy, and insist that they get out of this boring, sterile place and go out to eat.

The thought of what would follow kept her going long after the doctors tried to convince her that he might never wake up.

"The only time a lawyer can cry is when it's all over," she replied every time, smiling through the pain even as they looked at her with pity. "That's one of his rules."

Mia made it her own to abide by.


End file.
